Experiments in honing.

russian 5/8' blade one

dulled on glass
les lat( my slow on slurry, fast on water one)
tried to make slurry with my soft ichigomori slurry stone. VERY slow going. almost abandoned but stuck through it. took very long to get any slurry at all

five sets of half strokes(started turning grey though, right away) and three sets of circles later barely cuts arm hair.

had to reset slurry twice. still took forever to build it. conclusion: les lat is too hard for ichimugori, OR they just weren't meant for each other :))
 two more laps of circles and shaves arm hair decently but no pop or ping.

clean blade and stone and switch to hard ichimogori stone. same thing. almost no slurry. test it on my nouvelle vein and TONS of slurry, fast. Looks like nouvelle slurry though. If the nagura substitutes are so hard why won't they create les lat slurry? ack

Start dilution. still half strokes. dilute every 30 laps, then 20 then 10 barely any slurry. have to rebuild it again. ack.

then onto honing on the small matchbook hard karasu stone itself. Like on glass. no slurry just water. edge look ed great, sandblasted; under scope-.no microchips..
 shaved some arm hair and wanted more so I finished on the les lat hybrid bout , also like glass and it pinged and popped the arm hairs just like I like

then 30 laps on lined and 40 laps on leather. tested leg hair. nice . sharp and smooth. 20 more laps on leather and in the case.

I know it will shave smooth.

the hypothesis was wrong. I thought using the slurry stone on the hard les lat would bring out the properties of the slurry stone not the les lat but it wouldn't raise any damn slurry!?! trying to emulate the protocol with the j nats as I am getting two this week!!!! can't wait. :))
 The next level of the edge.

SO I dulled another 5/8" Russian and went back to work

This time with the nouvelle vein coti and the soft nagura. slurry in an instant :))


four stets of half strokes and I was ready to test arm hair - it felt right- but gave it two more laps of circles shaving arm hair no problem :)) Nice!! on to the dilution.

same coti but next nagura: the hard ochigomori stone. again, great slurry in an instant but luckily remembered it was supposed to be milky slurry and adjusted.

more half strokes, a few sets of 30 then dropped to 2 sets of 20 then some x strokes diluting every 10 reps.speed up the dilution as I could feel the edge getting close.
rinse blade and did some x strokes ( 15)

rinsed coti and blade and went to karasu stone for x strokes on water.

fucking brilliant. again like glass with light suction, ice skating across the stone. 30 x strokes in sets of 5 each direction and it was shaving leg hair perfectly. in half the time as with the les lat. or less than :))

30 on linen 60 on leather.  I love honing on those little bouts. I think I actually hone better .